


long days in the sun, preludes of the nights to come

by AozoraNoShita



Series: ar bharr na dtoinnti/on the crest of the waves [2]
Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Everything is Beautiful and Nothing Hurts, Fluff, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Selkies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-04
Updated: 2019-03-04
Packaged: 2019-11-12 02:17:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18001901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AozoraNoShita/pseuds/AozoraNoShita
Summary: How to make a former selkie-husband your actual husband.





	long days in the sun, preludes of the nights to come

**Author's Note:**

> This has been on my computer, 3/4 of the way finished, for uhhhh almost 2 year nows. I just banged out the last 1/4 because of aed713 commenting on the previous fic. I rarely respond to comments but I definitely read them and apparently just one short, nice comment was enough motivation to actually get me to look at the google doc again. So thank you!!!

 

 

 

John Laurens had migrated to the beach every summer for 22 years. There were pictures of him at 6 months old in teeny swim trunks, being held on his mother’s hip with a scenic vista of sparkling blue waves behind them on the shore. In all the years since then, he had never once missed the trip, even as the mounting tension within their family had led to his parents being conspicuously absent for their annual vacation the last four years Specifically, they’d stopped after John had declared his major as environmental science, against his father’s wishes, but at that point he was old enough to make the damn drive himself and bring his sister with him, too. Last year Martha had been invited to a friend’s place for the summer, but Herc and Laf had been scheduled to make their usual appearance, so he hadn’t been too upset. How could he be, looking out from his balcony with the clear blue of the sky and the dazzling blue of the ocean meeting on the horizon in front of him?

 

Then he’d met someone with the most intense blue eyes he’d ever seen, had a hurricane (just about literally) of a few days with that person, almost died, and then — 

 

Well, he’d been a bit nervous about coming back this year. 

 

But only a little bit.

 

“Probably the anti-anxiety medication is helping a lot with that,” Alex told him when John explained all of this.

 

“Well, I mean, that’s helping in general, but it doesn’t mean I never get nervous about things.”

 

“Yeah, but still. It’s helping.” Alex’s eyebrows were furrowed. He was weirdly insistent about this. John figured it came from a good place, namely, Alex being  _ glad  _ that the meds were helping, so he let it go and agreed. His boyfriend tended to get insistent about things he didn’t know for sure, would claim he was absolutely positive about it until he was proven thoroughly wrong, at which point he would say “oh” and change the subject until later, when John would be inundated with questions about how  _ exactly  _ did  _ that  _ work?

 

Alex used to be a selkie. He was mostly savvy about the human experience now, after a solid year as a human, but even when things went over his head he just pretended he knew what he was talking about. Sometimes it was kind of hilarious. He’d spent a month pretending to know what the mini whiteboard in John’s room was, but then he’d been baffled when it ended up being erased and John wrote something new on it. Naturally, John hadn’t let it go for weeks.

 

Alex poked him.

 

They were lying on his bed, door to the balcony open, listening to the combination of calm waves and soft rainfall outside.

 

“Tell me about blue,” Alex said.

 

“How about a poem?”

 

Alex beamed. He loved poetry. “Did you write it?”

 

“Nah, this is from something my mom used to read to me. Wanna hear it anyway?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Blue is a heron, a sapphire ring, you can smell blue in many a thing: gentian and larkspur, forget-me-nots, too. And if you listen, you can hear blue in wind over water, and wherever flax blooms, and when evening steps into lonely rooms. Cold is blue, flame shot from a welding torch is, too — hot, wild, screaming, blistering blue. And on winter mornings the dawns are blue…”

 

Alex took a second to mull this over. “That’s pretty,” he decided finally. He reached up and tugged at one of John’s curls. “And. What about brown?”

 

“Sure. Brown is the color of a country road, back of a turtle, back of a toad. Brown is cinnamon and morning toast, and the good smell of the Sunday roast. Brown is the color of work and the sound of a river, brown is bronze and a bow and a quiver. Brown is the house on the edge of town where wind is tearing the shingles down. Brown is a freckle, brown is a mole, brown is the Earth when you dig a hole. Brown is the hair on many a head, brown is chocolate and gingerbread. Brown is a feeling you get inside when wondering makes your mind grow wide. Brown is a leather shoe and a good glove — brown is comfortable as love.”

 

He leaned in and kissed the corned of Alexander’s eye. “It’s also the color of the most beautiful pair of eyes in the world,” he said.

 

Said beautiful eyes rolled dramatically. “You have to say that, you love me,” Alex complained, but he was smiling.

 

“Yeah,” John confirmed. “But I also have to say it because it’s true.”

 

And it was.

 

* * *

 

This was technically their one year anniversary.

 

John hadn’t really thought about it. The first few months had been a chaotic mess of recovering from almost drowning, getting accustomed to having a former selkie living with him, getting documentation made for said former selkie, a lot more fighting with his parents about his mysterious new boyfriend, the realization that he needed to talk to a therapist and had probably needed to for a while, and then finding a new equilibrium with his family, his meds, his new job,  _ and  _ his boyfriend.

 

Alex had taken to life on land easily, though. Like a fish to water. And he was probably the only reason John had made it through the last few months as well as he had. So it was just when it felt like everything had calmed down that he got a facebook message from Aaron Burr.

 

Ugh.

 

John knew Aaron Burr because Burr had also been going to the beach for 22 years. Their parents were friends, they’d had their summer beach houses right next to each other, and they’d even ended up going to the same college.

 

That did  _ not  _ make John and Aaron friends, though.

 

They’d always tolerated each other, and they’d hung out when no one else was around and they were bored, but that was it. They were just very different, was how Martha had diplomatically put it.

 

“He’s a draaaaaaag,” was how John had put it.

 

Anyway, they were connected on various social media platforms, although John rarely used his. (Alex, on the other hand, turned out to  _ love  _ the idea of social media, and especially loved bothering Burr on all platforms available to him — John was pretty sure they were actually good friends at this point.)

 

The message from Burr went roughly as follows:

 

_ Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah are you going to be at the beach this summer? Blah blah blah blah might be a nice way to celebrate your one year anniversary _ .

 

And then he’d gone and signed it all formal-like. In a facebook message.  _ Ugh _ .

 

_ you mean like OUR anniversary or alex’s 1 year as a human anniversary or??? _

 

He could send this to Burr because the other man’s significant other, Theodosia, was also a former selkie.

 

_ Both. _

 

John glared at this insultingly succinct answer. He could almost see Burr raising an eyebrow at him through the tablet screen. The eyebrow was telling him that he didn’t have a romantic bone in his body.

 

He’d blocked Burr on facebook, because he could, and went to ask Alex if he wanted to go back to the beach the next week.

 

So now here they were, just the two of them at the beach house, a year after they’d met. They’d actually been back twice before, because of the initial strain on Alex when vacation had ended last year and John had to go back to his apartment inland and finish his last semester (fifth year senior and unashamed of it). Alex had never been away from the ocean for so long before, and he’d spent the first two months periodically going into some kind of fugue-like state that had scared John a lot. So fall break and Thanksgiving had been spent back at the beach, which seemed to help. And then John had graduated and almost immediately found a job with education outreach at an aquarium upstate, which was technically on a river, but very close to where it met the ocean, and so when they moved they were only a twenty minute drive away from the beach.

 

But it wasn’t  _ their  _ beach.

 

They’d made the drive down the day before, through a light drizzle of rain. John had been driving, because Alex was still not totally sold on the idea of being in control of a two-ton metal vehicle. It’d been a peaceful ride, with John occasionally glancing over to see Alex deeply absorbed in his books for the online classes he was starting in the spring. It had also taken several hours to get there, but John didn’t mind so long as his music was playing and Alex was beside him.

 

Today, though, the weather had cleared. It was perfect summer weather, warm and dazzlingly bright, and bringing with it the eternally hopeful feeling of summertime. John kept finding himself taking deep lungfuls of it and grinning.

 

“If it doesn’t feel like you’re breathing underwater then it’s not humid enough, right?” Alex asked, grinning and poking him in the side.

 

“Right.”

 

They looked out at the crashing cerulean waves together.

 

“We’re going bodysurfing, right?” Alex prodded after a minute.

 

“ _ Hell  _ yes. Race you down!” And he took off running, hearing Alex laugh and chase after him down the wooden walkway to the beach.

 

They ran all the way to the water’s edge, shedding their shirts somewhere around the tideline. The water was surprisingly warm when it surged up around his ankles. Millions of tiny fragments of shells tumbled over his feet, trapped right at the edge of the water. As they moved further in, the sand turned smoother and drew gently at his toes.

 

The waves were coming in strong, breaking into roaring, bubbling curves near-constantly. Struggling out past the breakers felt like a Sisyphean task; every time John thought he’d be able to stop for a moment another wave would come crashing toward them. He ended up turning sideways and bodyslamming into a few of them like a football player. The ones he couldn’t jump over or slam into, he dove under, feeling the current push his hair back as it raced past him. Every time he came up he could hear sea foam bubbles fizzing on the water like fireworks, and Alexander’s breathless laughter behind him.

 

(A year ago, this would have scared him. To see Alexander dashing into the water, he would have thought the selkie was trying to leave and go home. But now he  _ knew _ , Alex wasn’t running away from him. He was running  _ towards  _ John, because the ocean wasn’t his home, John was, because Alex had  _ chosen  _ that. And John — )

 

A wave hit hit him with so much force that it pushed him under, and the wave right behind that one dragged him further in towards shore. Thankfully Alex yanked him up before he got too far.

 

“That’s not how you catch a wave, John.”

 

“Fuck off, I’m gonna beat you this time.”

 

“Ha! Not likely.”

 

“Watch me!” John crowed, and shoved Alex under so he could catch the wave coming towards them first.

 

Catching a wave was something that took a lot of practice. A wave that had already broken was no good, and one that wasn’t close enough to breaking would carry you maybe a few feet and then leave you behind as it raced in to shore. Just the right sweet spot was hard to find. But John had a lot practice.

 

He caught it perfectly, taking a deep breath and a few paddling strokes towards land before he was caught up and carried in a rush of sound and water all the way back to shore. The powerful current swept him up and tumbled him head over heels and then a few times in a corkscrew just for good measure before slamming him on his back into the sand about a foot away from the beach.

 

John sat up just in time to stop the next wave from rushing right over his face, although it did hit him pretty hard in the chest.

 

Alex ended up beside him two waves later, gasping for breath.

 

“...Race you back out.”

 

John scrambled up and ran right back in instead of answering, laughing at Alex’s indignant howl behind him.

 

* * *

 

 

When they got back up to the beach house, they ended up sitting down on the patio furniture for a bit because John was fucking  _ exhausted _ .

 

“I always forget how much energy that takes,” he moaned. “I’m gonna be covered in bruises tomorrow. From the  _ ocean _ .”

 

“And the beach,” Alex reminded him. “You basically got, uh, ‘slam dunked’ into the shoreline a few times there.” He waited for just a beat to see if John would give him pointers on his use of the expression. John nodded encouragingly, so he continued. “I was much more graceful.”

 

“Were not.”

 

“I’m a creature of the sea,” Alex sniffed. “I’m always graceful in the water.”

 

“You snorted a bunch of seawater laughing at me.”

 

“Very gracefully,” he insisted, and held the superior expression for a few seconds before dissolving into giggles.

 

John smiled, helpless in the face of Alex’s happiness.

 

* * *

 

 

And then he woke up several hours later, still in the patio chair. Alex was still in the chair next to him, chin propped in his hand, watching him sleep.

 

_ Probably never going to break him of that habit _ , John thought. Then he reached up and scratched at his scalp, which,  _ ew _ . “Alex,” he whined. “Why’d you let me fall asleep? Now my hair’s dried like this.”

 

“What, you mean all curly and cute-like?”

 

John pointedly patted the top of his own head, which crunched a little bit with dried salt.

 

“...Okay, but it still looks cute.”

 

“Easy for you to say,” John grumbled. Alex’s hair turned curly and somehow, inexplicably soft in saltwater. John’s just turned into a mess. “I’m gonna have to wash it at least twice. And then try to get the knots out…”

 

“I’ll help,” Alex offered.

 

“Oh…?”

 

“Yeah.” He batted his lashes. “We can shower together.”

 

“Uh. Yeah. Okay then.”

 

* * *

 

 

Bathing with Alex was one of John’s absolute favorite things to do. The former selkie was  _ beautiful _ , first of all, and he got to put his hands  _ all over that _ , and what wasn’t there to love about it, honestly? And they were saving water, too.

 

Alex had started growing more hair over the last few months. John still wasn’t clear on some of the little details about selkie things, although he knew a lot more than he’d ever thought he would about the supposedly mythological creatures. And for their first few weeks together he’d been scared to really ask about it.

 

Now he had a vague idea that Alex had never had much body hair while in human form, and his coat was basically his fur when he was a seal — that worked, somehow, whatever — but now that he’d been a human for a year he’d grown a lot. 

 

Alex’s hair was longer, first of all. And sleek and dark and wonderful for John to run his fingers through. But also he’d started growing facial hair, for the novelty of it John was pretty sure, and now had the makings of a nice goatee. (Laf had been thrilled about this, and John had come back from a session with his therapist once to find that Alex and Laf had made a video of themselves singing a song about having goatees in a boat. Weirdos.) 

 

He’d also been growing more body hair, uh,  _ everywhere _ , and John loved to trace the new, darkening line of hair from Alex’s belly button and down his navel and right into the bush of his pubic hair. Sometimes in a sexy way, but sometimes it was just  _ nice _ . Alex had insinuated he had some kind of “thing” about it, but John was denying that.

 

John was eyeing the dark trail appreciatively in the shower until Alex told him “Eyes up,” rather pointedly and they finished washing their hair (John’s twice). 

 

“Oh yeah, I had an idea for something to do,” John remembered as they were rinsing off a final time.

 

“Hm?”

 

“Well, I know how your favorite food is shellfish of all kinds.”

 

“Yes. Definitely.”

 

“So I was thinking we could go crabbing? I already bought supplies for it, and we could pack a picnic and make an afternoon of it and then have crab for dinner?”

 

Alex blinked slowly. “You already brought supplies? So we could catch my favorite food and have it for dinner?”

 

“Yeah…” Suddenly nervous, John hastened to explain. “Just, it’s our one year anniversary, right? So I thought we could do something a little extra special. Y’know, if you want.”

 

“One year,” Alex repeated, like he was testing the words. His head tilted curiously. “John, do you ever think we’re...moving too fast?”

 

The question made him freeze for a moment. But Alex never minced words. If he was asking, it wasn’t necessarily because  _ he  _ thought they were moving too fast, but because he was genuinely curious if John thought that was the case.

 

“I mean.” He stopped for a moment to gather his thoughts, because he wanted to say this right. “I don’t think so. I do feel like this is a fairy tale sometimes, where things happen so quickly and people fall in love and they get married three days later and if it were anyone else in real life you’d think that was crazy. But. This is a selkie story, right? But one with a happy ending. And we’re already in the happy ending part.”

 

Alex surged up and kissed him in answer.

 

“Let’s go crabbing,” he said when he leaned back again.

 

“Okay. Yeah. Crabs. Let’s go.”

 

* * *

 

 

They drove down to the docks at the end of the island with the crabbing supplies packed in the back and the Moana soundtrack playing on the stereo. Alex spent the entire ride expounding on the virtues of Moana over “the mermaid movie,” which was a familiar topic but John never got tired of listening to Alex rant about this so it was fine. And no matter how good Alex was at arguing, he still liked the mermaid movie.

 

The docks were fairly quiet in the heat of the early afternoon. This was one of the smaller mooring spots on the island: there was one main long L-shaped pier, with several small boat slips and a few floating docks attached to the pilings. Ten boats were tied to the docks at various spots: mostly sailboats, with two small motorboats and one glorified canoe that someone had stuck a trolling motor on. There was an empty slip right at the bend of the L where they clambered down onto the salt- and sun-weathered wood, inches away from the water. John spread out two beach towels so they wouldn’t have to sit on the splintering boards, a large cooler full of ice and supplies at one end of their setup and a smaller one with drinks and snacks at the other end.

 

Alex beamed sunnily at him, carrying a large fishing net on a pole over his shoulders, as John set up.

 

“Alright, this is how we’re gonna do this,” John said when he’d arranged everything to his liking. He patted the space beside him for Alex to sit. “We’re gonna make four traps.”

 

Working carefully over the edge of the towel he was sitting on, he showed Alex the pack of raw chicken thighs in the cooler. He took out four and plopped them down onto the wood. Each thigh was tied securely with a long string and a small weight knotted at the bottom. He cut each string so there was several feet of length on each trap.

 

“This is it.”

 

Alex eyed them dubiously. “You’ve made...raw chicken pendulums.”

 

John considered that. “I guess. Yeah. Basically. But here, look, we’re gonna toss the chicken in the water, it sinks with the weight down to the bottom where the crabs are, and then we tie the end to the cleats in a few different places. So we’ll put one in here,” he tossed one in and tied the string to the closest cleat, “and we’ll put the others in some slips further away. Here.” He handed one of the strings to Alex, who took it willingly enough, although he still looked skeptical. “Find a place to put it,” John encouraged him.

 

“If you say so.”

 

John laughed. “I swear, it’ll work. We just have to wait.”

 

“Human fishing is too much waiting,” Alex complained, even as he started to climb up to the main dock, chicken dangling from his hand. “Fishing as a seal has much more immediate gratification.”

 

“Yeah, yeah.”

 

John set out the other two traps, and with all four spaced at roughly even distances along the dock, they reconvened next to the coolers and their first trap. “And then we pour one out for the old gods of fishing,” John said seriously, and grabbed a can of soda. He cracked it open and poured a generous splash into the water.

 

He was joking, but Alex just blinked and intoned, “For Lir,” as he followed suit.

 

John debated for a second but ultimately decided to let that one lie. “And now we wait!” he said brightly and settled down to sit on the towels.

 

“ _ Ughhh _ . You sound like Aaron.”

 

“How dare you.” He yanked on the hem of his boyfriend’s shirt to get him to sit down next to him. He pulled a box of fruit rollups out of the cooler, as they were Alex’s favorite “human food” currently, and allowed himself to enjoy the sunburst of happiness he felt in his chest at the way Alex beamed when he saw he’d brought them.

 

They waited 20 minutes, chattering happily and snacking, before John pointed out the small stream of bubbles rising over where they’d set the first trap.

 

“Crab.”

 

“Okay, well now what?”

 

“Just be ready with the net.”

 

He started to pull slowly on the string, feeling the extra weight on the end of the line, definitely not just the chicken bait. He could feel the faintest tremors in the string as the crustacean pulled off hunks of meat with its claws.

 

“This is going very slowly,” Alex hissed at him, gripping the net and lowering the woven part slowly into the water next to the line.

 

“If you pull ‘em up too fast the crab will jump off and swim away,” he whispered back.

 

“ _ Much  _ faster as a seal,” he muttered, shifting impatiently but subsiding to watch the line come up.

 

When they could see the barest outline of the shape at the end of the line through the murky water, John nodded.

 

Alex swiftly ducked the net under the chicken and its passenger and pulled it up. It emerged with not one but two crabs attached, both flailing their legs wildly as they were exposed to the air.

 

John grinned as Alex held the net closer for examination. The crabs had grey-brown shells that matched the shade of the water, but their claws were a vivd blue with red at the tips.

 

“I think that one’s too small,” he said pointing. “But the big one we can stick in the cooler.”

 

Alex raised on eyebrow at him. “How do we get it in the cooler?”

 

“ _ Carefully _ .”

 

After some maneuvering and a little bit of shrieking where it looked like John might get pinched, they had tossed the smaller crab back in the water and confined the large one in the cooler.

 

They high fived.

 

“I’m gonna check the other traps,” Alex told him before racing off to the end of the dock. 

 

John shook his head and pulled out his phone, checking to make sure Alex was out of earshot before he called Hercules.

 

“ _ Mon ami! _ ” came the enthusiastic greeting when the call connected.

 

“Dude, I didn’t call you! Put Herc on the line.”

 

Laf sniffed indignantly. “No! I want to hear this, too. I can offer suggestions! I’ll put it on speaker.”

 

“No offense, but your last suggestions were terrible. And involved an alligator. What is it with you and the alligators?”

 

“He has a point,” Herc said, finally on the call.

 

John could practically hear Laf sulking. “I’m working on getting some of his favorite foods for tonight, and it’s been a good day so far, and it’ll be a pretty night, I just, I’m just, I dunno, I’m worried about what to  _ say _ .”

 

Laf made a loud  _ pshaw  _ noise. “Please, this is the thing you need to be worried about the  _ least _ . Well, not that you have to worry about any of it because it will be perfect, but definitely not the  _ words _ .”

 

“Actually I agree with Laf on that one. Alex has always liked your way with words. It’ll come naturally,” Herc said.

 

“I can’t believe we’re not allowed to be there to film it —” Laf started to grumble, which was when Alex announced his presence with a loud, “John!”

 

He jumped a little, almost fumbling his phone. “Huh? What is it?”

 

“None of the other traps had crabs on them, even though I pulled them up  _ very  _ slowly. What if I just get in the water and swim down to the bottom and try to pick some crabs up?”

 

John blinked up at where his boyfriend was standing above him, haloed in sunlight. “Alex. Do you remember the conversation we had about the Greek chorus of your life?”

 

“Right, there’s some omniscient group of nosey assholes in waiting in “the wings” giving a running commentary on my choices. Yeah, I remember.”

 

“So what is your Greek chorus saying right now?”

 

Obligingly, Laf and Herc started shrieking  _ nooooo _ and  _ bad ideaaaa _ over the phone, loud enough that Alex could hear them.

 

Alex opened his mouth, looking ready to argue, but John held up a finger.

 

“ _ Hubris _ , man. I know you’ve read about it for that Greek theatre class you’re signed up for.”

 

Alex’s nose twitched as he deliberated, but he did end up sitting back down beside him. “I’m still not entirely sold on this course of action,” he clarified.

 

John reached over to clap him on the shoulder. “But I appreciate that you’re trying it.”

 

With a huff, Alex reached over to grab his phone. “Guys,” he whined, “John won’t let me try to swim and pick up crabs with my bare hands.”

 

John could hear his so-called friends immediately change their tune to  _ how dare he  _ and  _ what! How cruel! _

 

With a sigh that was half a laugh, he lay back and let the warmth of the weathered wood lull him into light doze.

 

“Words,” he muttered to himself, and felt Alex reach out and gently tangle their fingers together.

 

* * *

  
  


Night descended slowly, a fiery sunset that took an hour to finally fade from red to purple and then dark, star-strewn indigo.

 

John had hooked up the house’s sound system to play on the lower level and out on the patio: “ _ Put a wetsuit on, come on, come on, grow your hair out long, come on, come on, put a T-shirt on, do me wrong, do me wrong, do me wrong…” _

 

Alex had the sliding door to the patio open and was doing some kind of weird step-and-slow-twirl dance out there to the music on the outdoor speakers. Watching him made John think of his strong, sinuous movement in the water, with his hair birling around him like silk. It didn’t translate exactly to what he was doing on land, but it made for very distinctive movement that never failed to captivate his audience (maybe not a fair assessment — the audience in question was almost always John, and John was almost always captivated by his boyfriend).

 

It was a shame it was time for murder.

 

John turned away from his whirling boyfriend and clacked the tongs he was holding a few times, advancing on the cooler full of crabs. There was a boiling pot of water and a bunch of Old Bay seasoning waiting for them.

 

Before the could actually nab one, though, he heard Alex make a soft noise from the patio. John glanced over his shoulder and saw that Alex had found the King’s Helmet shell he’d hidden behind a potted plant for later.

 

“UH,” he said, loudly and instinctually. Alex looked over at him, at which point John dropped the tongs and his knee knocked into the slightly-wobbly stool the cooler was perched on. The whole thing overturned, sending a cascade of several pissed off blue crabs onto the linoleum floor, where they immediately scattered and raised their claws at John, at each other, and at their surroundings.

 

John looked at them, looked at Alex, and hurried out onto the patio, closing the door on the crab showdown behind him. He was staring at the shell in Alex’s hands, and Alex was staring at him.

 

“You found that,” he said weakly.

 

“Yeaaaah. Oh, is it for me?” Alex lit up, confusion forgotten for the moment at the prospect of a gift. Which it kind of was but not...exactly.

 

“It’s for you…” John trailed off. Alex put the shell up to his ear--it was practically the size of his head. “I found that as a kid, visiting a beach in North Carolina. I’ve had it for, uh, a long time.” When he’d talked to Laf and Herc and they’d told him not to worry about the words, he’d felt okay about this. Now that it was happening but not exactly in the order he’d planned? He wished he’d tried to practice a little more.

 

“I can hear the ocean,” Alex whispered, eyes closing as he smiled softly. “The one in the shell.”

 

“Can you hear anything else in there?” John blurted out, and just barely restrained himself from smacking his hand over his face in embarrassment.

 

“I don’t think there’s still anything living in here, John, if you found it when you were a kid?” Alex told him slowly, going right back to confusion. He gave the shell a perfunctory little shake to illustrate his point.

 

They both heard the clear sound of something small clinking against the porcelain-like interior. Still looking terribly confused, Alex held his hand out and shook the shell over it.

 

A ring fell out.

 

They blinked down at it.

 

_ Think of something to say! _ John’s brain screeched at him. But Alex beat him to the punch.

 

“I’ve been reading about this!” Alex exclaimed.

 

John gaped a little bit as his boyfriend continued speaking.

 

“In the fairytales and plays and everything. They get married and live happily ever after. But then they never go into detail after that.”

 

“That’s what sequels are for,” John pointed out, because his brain was still being supremely unhelpful. Alex just gave him a look.

 

“Don’t talk to me about sequels. Anyway. None of the stories ever have the part before,  _ and  _ the wedding,  _ and  _ the happily ever after, all together.”

 

“It’s a lot to tell in one story,” he pointed out.

 

Alex grinned and threw his arms around John’s neck, bringing his face in close where John could see the beautiful earthen brown of his eyes up close. “But how about over a whole life time?”

 

John could feel himself smiling, like he could feel the slight sting of salt air in his eyes and the warm band of Alex’s arms over his shoulders. “Sounds good to me.”

 

“Well, you know I like it when you ask me to stay with you.”

 

It made him laugh, giddy. “Alex, will you marry me?”

 

“Yes!” Alex breathed out on a laugh before surging up to kiss him.

 

* * *

  
  


The crabs were forgotten until the water boiled over. Despite their best efforts, they were eaten for dinner, the first of many anniversary meals.

 

The story continued, taking a lifetime to tell.

**Author's Note:**

> Fic title is from Something in the Water by Brooke Fraser. The song Alex is dancing to is Wetsuit by The Vaccines! Both awesome songs!!
> 
> Helmet shells are real big and used to be used to make cameos!
> 
> At the moment I'm riding out this probably short-lived moment of motivation so this has not been edited AT ALL for A LONG TIME. I might come back and edit it in a bit. Maybe. Feel free to point out any glaring typos or formatting issues.
> 
> Thank you to anyone who read the original work from almost 3 years ago and came back to read this! And to anyone who reads this series because it finally updated! I love everyone in this Chili's.


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